Harvest

On her TV show a few weeks ago, MSNBC hostess Melissa Harris-Perry admonished her guest, Alfonso Aguilar, when he used the words “hard worker” to describe Rep. Paul Ryan. Her reason – and I paraphrase – is that it...

The Cotton Research and Promotion Program has announced dates for the 2016 Young Guns Tour of Cotton Incorporated headquarters in Raleigh, N.C. The Young Guns Tour targets young cotton producers who have not had the opportunity to visit the...

ARKANSAS The National Agricultural Statistics Service November Crop Production report lowered our yield estimate for Arkansas cotton to 1,124 pounds of lint per acre down from last month’s estimate of 1,218 pounds of lint per acre. The November estimate is...

ARKANSAS The National Agricultural Statistics Service October Crop Production report kept the yield estimate for Arkansas cotton at 1,218 lbs lint/A. Last month, I felt this estimate was too high for a number of reasons. However, as our harvest is...

A brief glance at the face of cotton production would indicate that there are a lot of older men growing the crop. But, a deeper look reveals that a new and diverse generation of cotton producers is helping to...

OKLAHOMA Although late, the Oklahoma cotton crop has made good progress in the past several weeks. A significant amount of irrigated cotton was on time with respect to cutout during the last half of August. Even though the crop pretty...

Missouri’s Rone Family Strives For Efficiency By Tommy Horton Defoliating and harvesting a cotton crop is like painting a picture. Unless everything is mixed together perfectly, the finished product won’t be that good. Some have even suggested that the entire exercise...

During harvest, like the rest of the Cotton Belt, Western cotton producers want the most efficient way to drop leaves without affecting the yield or quality of their cotton. Several conditions have led farmers to move from traditional desiccant...

By Tommy Horton, Editor How important is cotton production in Georgia? And is it still a viable commodity when prices dip into the 60- cent range? Those are legitimate questions to ask any farmer growing the crop in 2014. And...

For all practical purposes, the 2013 cotton has been harvested. There may be a few isolated fields that haven’t been harvested, but these would be on the heavier, wetter soils that are prone to flooding. More importantly, the modules have been taken to the gins. I haven’t seen a module truck on the road for at least three weeks.

Missouri’s cotton producers are ready to get this crop out of the field. However, they will need to wait longer than usual. According to the Crop Progress and Condition Report for the week ending Sept. 15, cotton opening bolls were 10 percent complete, 33 days behind last year and 24 days behind normal.

We’re almost to the end of this long 2013 season, and by the time many of you read this issue of Cotton Farming, we’re hopeful that the cotton crop will have been harvested in a timely fashion – even if it was a couple of weeks late. You might say this was another wild roller coaster ride of a season with unpredictable weather in nearly every region except the West.

The volume of cotton that gets left on the ground during the harvest season has always been a source of frustration for producers. In the Western Cotton Belt, farmers are able to gather some of that cotton using Rood cotton harvesters. The harvesters use slotted belts to pick the cotton from the ground.

As harvest begins across the Belt, each region faces its own specific challenge as farmers begin the meticulous task of delivering this year’s crop to the gin. Cotton Farming Editor Tommy Horton interviewed four different ag experts in the...

At this time, our cotton is about two weeks behind our normal development. Much of the cotton growing area has had about six inches of rain or more within the last month, with most of it coming in two weeks. We normally refer to the July and August rains as “million dollar” rains because it helps revive the non-irrigated cotton, and it lowers irrigation costs.